Robespierre was ready to lead the onslaught. Mirabeau saw it in the glitter of those evil eyes, and knowing how relentless and unprincipled the man was, felt a thrill of doubt rush over him. Nothing but certainty could have impelled that coward nature to creep into the light. Had Louison failed him? Could she have broken through the thrall of his persuasions and gone over to the enemy? The night before he felt a sort of pride in trusting everything to the power of his own personal influence over a woman that nothing else could tame or terrify; but now, when he stood face to face with an awful danger, for the first time in his life Mirabeau distrusted himself. What but a dead certainty could give that assured air to Robespierre? Why had he trusted to those powers of persuasion which never yet had failed him with the sex, but might prove ineffectual, for the first time, when his honor and very life depended on them? The night before his hand was almost on that very paper; a movement of the fingers, and he might have drawn it from Louison’s bosom, and, had he so chosen, defied her afterward. But intolerable self-conceit had prevented this act of safety. How he cursed the vanity which had filled his mind with all these harrowing doubts. “Whom the gods destroy they first make mad,” he muttered to himself. “I was, indeed, mad when I permitted her to leave me with _that_ in her bosom.” The galleries were already overrun with women—for that cry in the street had sent crowds to the Assembly. Now they began to fill the floor, and force themselves among the members with a feeling of equality which no one had the courage to resist or rebuke. All at once Louison Brisot appeared making a passage through the throng, arrayed with a glow and flash of rich colors, and looking proudly beautiful. Her eyes roved around the Assembly, and settled on Robespierre, who was looking at her with the changeful glitter of a serpent in his eyes. Louison met this look with an almost imperceptible bend of the head. Mirabeau saw it, and the bold heart quailed within him. At last Louison’s eyes fell upon his face, which was turned anxiously upon her. She gave him no signal. She did not even smile, but turned her back, and began talking airily with one of his bitterest enemies. Now and then he caught her glance turned on him from under her long eyelashes, as if she enjoyed his anxiety. Then he cursed the woman in his heart, but more bitterly cursed his own folly for leaving the means of his destruction in her power.